“The circus?”
“That’s right.”
“And he has a dog act.”
“Had. He cut up a woman and took her to the dump.”
“Plebin?”
“Yes.”
“I go out there, and there’s no dead body, I could change that, supply one, mood I’m in. Understand?”
“Just meet us at the dump.”
“Who’s us?”
I told him, gave him some background on Waldo, explained what Martha and Jasmine found in the LaBorde newspapers, hung up, and me and my fellow sleuths drove back to the dump.
We waited outside the dump in Martha’s van until Sam showed in his blue Ford. We waved at him and started the van and led him into the dump. We drove up to the spot near the derrick and got out. None of us went over to the boxes for a look. We didn’t speak. We listened to the pumps doing their work inside the derricks. Kerchunk, kerchunk, kerchunk.
Sam pulled up behind us and got out. He was wearing blue jeans and tennis shoes and his pajama top. He looked at me and Jasmine and Martha. Fact is, he looked at Martha quite a while.
“You want maybe I should send you a picture, or something?” Martha said.
Sam didn’t say anything. He looked away from Martha and said to me, “All right. Where’s the body?”
“It’s kind of here and there,” I said, and pointed. “In those boxes. Start with the little one, there. That’s her head.”
Sam looked in the box, and I saw him jump a little. Then he went still, bent forward and pulled the woman’s head out by the hair, held it up in front of him and looked at it. He spun and tossed it to me. Reflexively, I caught it, then dropped it. By the time it hit the ground I felt like a number one horse’s ass.
It wasn’t a human head. It was a mannequin head with a black paint mark covering the stump of the neck, which had been neatly sawed in two.
“Here, Jasmine,” Sam said. “You take a leg,” and he hoisted a mannequin leg out of another box and tossed it at her. She shrieked and dodged and it landed on the ground. “And you that’s gonna send me a picture. You take an arm.” He pulled a mannequin arm out of another box and tossed it at Martha, who swatted it out of the air with her putter cane.
He turned and kicked another of the boxes and sent a leg and an arm sailing into a heap of brush and old paint cans.
“Goddamn it, Plebin,” he said. “You’ve done it again.” He came over and stood in front of me. “Man, you’re nuts. Absolutely nuts.”
“Wasn’t just Plebin,” Martha said. “We all thought it. The guy brought this stuff out here is a weirdo. We’ve been watching him.”
“You have?” Sam said. “Playing detective, huh? That’s sweet. That’s real sweet. Plebin, come here, will you?”
I went over and stood by him. He put an arm around my shoulders and walked me off from Jasmine and Martha. He whispered to me.
“Plebin. You’re not learning, man. Not a bit. Not only are you fucking up your life, you’re fucking up mine. Listen here. Me and the old lady, we’re not doing so good, see.”
“I’m sorry to hear it. Toni has always been so great.”
“Yeah, well, you see, she’s jealous. You know that.”
“Oh yeah. Always has been.”
“There you are. She’s gotten worse too. And you see, I spend a lot of time away from the home. Out of the bed. Bad hours. You getting what I’m saying here?”
“Yeah.”
He pulled me closer and patted my chest with his other hand. “Good. Not only is that bad, me spending those hours away from home and out of the bed at bedtime, but hey, I’m so bushed these days, I get ready to lay a little pipe, well, I got no lead in the pencil. Like a goddamn spaghetti, that’s how it is. Know what I’m saying?”
“Least when you do get it hard, you get to lay pipe,” I said.
“But I’m not laying it enough. It’s because I don’t get rest. But Toni, you know what she thinks? She thinks it’s because I’m having a little extracurricular activity. You know what I mean? Thinks I’m out banging hole like there’s no tomorrow.”
“Hey, I’m sorry, Sam, but…”
“So now I’ve got the rest problem again. I’m tired right now. I don’t recover like I used to. I don’t get eight hours of sack time, hey, I can’t get it up. I have a bad day, which I do when I’m tired, I can’t get it up. My shit comes out different, I can’t get it up. I’ve gotten sensitive in my old age. Everything goes straight to my dick. Toni, she gets ready for me to do my duty, guess what?”
“You’re too tired. You can’t get it up.”
“Bingo. The ole Johnson is like an empty sock. And when I can’t get it up, what does Toni think?”
“You’re fucking around?”
“That’s right. And it’s not bad enough I gotta be tired for legitimate reasons, but now I got to be tired because you and your daughter and Ma Frankenstein over there are seeing heads in boxes. Trailing some innocent bystander and trying to tie him in with murder when there’s nobody been murdered. Know what I’m saying?”
“Sam, the guy looks the part. Acts it. There’s been murders everywhere the circus goes…”
“Plebin, ole buddy. Hush your mouth, okay? Listen up tight. I’m going home now. I’m going back to bed. You wake me up again, I’ll run over you with a truck. I don’t have a truck, but I’ll borrow one for the purpose. Got me?”
“Yeah.”
“All right. Good night.” He took his arm off my shoulders, walked back to his car and opened the door. He started to get inside, then straightened. He looked over the roof at me. “Come by and have dinner next week. Toni still makes a good chicken-fried steak. Been a while since she’s seen you.”
“I’ll keep it in mind. Give her my love.”
“Yeah. And Plebin, don’t call with any more murders, all right? You got a good imagination, but as a detective, you’re the worst.” He looked at Jasmine. “Jasmine, you stick with your mother.” He got in his car, backed around and drove away.
I went over and stood with my fellow sleuths and looked down at the mannequin head. I picked it up by the hair and looked at it. “I think I’ll have this mounted,” I said. “Just to remind me what a jackass I am.”
Back at the apartment I sat on the bed with the window open, the mannequin head on the pillow beside me. Jasmine sat in the dresser chair and Martha had one of my rickety kitchen chairs turned around backwards and she sat with her arms crossed on the back of it, sweat running out from under her wool cap, collecting in her mustache.
“I still think something funny is going on there,” Jasmine said.
“Oh, shut up,” I said.
“We know something funny is going on,” Martha said.
“We means you two,” I said. “Don’t include me. I don’t know anything except I’ve made a fool out of myself and Sam is having trouble with his sex life, or maybe what he told me was some kind of parable.”
“Sex life,” Jasmine said. “What did he tell you?”
“Forget,” I said.
“That Sam is some sorry cop,” Martha said. “He should have at least investigated Waldo. Guy who paints and cuts up mannequins isn’t your everyday fella, I’d think. I bet he’s painting and sawing them up because he hasn’t picked a victim yet. It’s his way of appeasing himself until he’s chosen someone. Akin to masturbation instead of real sex.”
“If we could see inside his trailer,” Jasmine said, “I bet we’d find evidence of something more than mannequins. Evidence of past crimes maybe.”
“I’ve had enough” I said. “And Jasmine, so have you. And Martha, if you’re smart, so have you.”
Martha got out one of her little cigarettes.
